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GOP bill: No more bonuses until the IRS hands over emails, documents

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Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has proposed new legislation that would prevent senior officials at the IRS from receiving any performance bonuses until the IRS hands over all the emails and documents its demanding as part of its investigation into the IRS targeting scandal.

Cornyn released his bill after another week that’s left Republicans frustrated with the inability of the IRS to procure emails from Lois Lerner. She’s the former IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations who Republicans say is at the center of the targeting scandal.

Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn of Texas is proposing an end to IRS bonuses until the IRS gives Congress the emails and documents it’s requested. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Just this week, House Republicans pressed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to explain why it took so long for the IRS to tell Congress that two years’ worth of Lerner’s emails went missing.

Koskinen’s replies left Republicans unhappy, and Cornyn’s bill is an attempt to put more pressure on the IRS to deliver.

“If President Obama’s IRS thinks it can stonewall Congress by running out the clock, then the administration gravely underestimates the American people’s desire for transparency and accountability from their government,” Cornyn said Tuesday. “This legislation will pressure President Obama’s IRS to comply with congressional investigators and answer the American public’s demand for the truth.”

In April, Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) proposed legislation to stop handing out bonuses to IRS officials who are late paying their income taxes.

That bill was proposed after reports that 1,146 IRS employees received more than $1 million in bonuses from 2010 to 2012 even though they had failed to pay their taxes on time.